U.K. anti-terror police join investigation into 'unknown substance' that left 2 people in crit

British counterterrorism police were investigating Wednesday after two people were left in critical condition, exposed to an unknown substance a few miles from where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent.

The Wiltshire Police force declared a "major incident" after a man and a woman in their 40s were hospitalized after being found unconscious Saturday at a residential building in Amesbury, eight miles from Salisbury, where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned on March 4.

Friends named the couple as Dawn Sturgess, 44, and Charlie Rowley, 45. Police did not release their names, but confirmed their ages and said they were British nationals from the local area.

London's Metropolitan Police force said that "given the recent events in Salisbury," counterterrorism officers were working with local police on the investigation. British media reported that samples of the mystery substance had been sent to the Porton Down defense research laboratory for testing.

Police cordoned off a home and other places the pair visited before falling ill, including a nearby church and a pharmacy, but health officials said there was not believed to be a wider risk to the public.

A major incident is a designation allowing British authorities to mobilize more than one emergency agency.

The emergency services' response echoes that in the case of the Skripals, whose illness initially baffled doctors after they were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury. Scientists at Porton Down concluded they had been poisoned with Novichok, a type of nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Britain accuses Russia of poisoning the Skripals, a claim Moscow strongly denies. The poisoning sparked a Cold War-style diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West, including the expulsion of hundreds of diplomats from both sides.

The two Amesbury victims were being treated at Salisbury District Hospital, where the Skripals spent weeks in critical condition.

More at link.

Donald Trump: 'What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening'

"Truth isn't truth"- Rudy Giuliani

"China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump's very, very large brain," - Donald Trump.

"Yeah, I have to say these guys(trolls) are pretty sharp. Sort of good to get a challenge and sharpen your thoughts." NorthCarolinaLiberty

UK counter-terrorism chief Neil Basu: The substance was 'Novichok'

"This evening I’ve received test result from Porton Down [laboratory] that show that the two people have been exposed to the nerve agent ‘Novichok,'” Neil Basu said, adding that it has been identified as “the same nerve agent that contaminated Yulia and Sergey Skripal.”

The couple poisoned by Novichok were exposed to the substance after handling a contaminated item, police say.

Charlie Rowley, 45, and Dawn Sturgess, 44, collapsed at a house in Amesbury, Wiltshire, on Saturday and remain critically ill.

Home secretary Sajid Javid said the nerve agent was the same as that used on ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in March.

Russia said Theresa May's government was subjecting them "to hell".

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova urged police not to be led by the "dirty political game" and said she was confident London would have to apologise to Russia.

Mr Javid accused Russia of using Britain as a "dumping ground for poison" after the second incident involving the nerve agent.

'A vial or a syringe'

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said that because the highest concentration of Novichok was found on the couple's hands, police believe the item they handled could be a container or reciprocal that was used to carry the nerve agent.

He said the most likely hypothesis is that the Novichok was left over from an item discarded after the attack on the Skripals.

The BBC's home affairs correspondent June Kelly said it has been suggested the item "could be a vial or syringe because of the couple's lifestyle".

Debbie Stark, south west deputy director from Public Health England said the risk to the public of further poisoning incidents "remains low".

They have still not identified just what it was they came in contact with or where it may be currently located.

More at link.

Last edited by Zippyjuan; 07-05-2018 at 12:06 PM.

Donald Trump: 'What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening'

"Truth isn't truth"- Rudy Giuliani

"China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump's very, very large brain," - Donald Trump.

"Yeah, I have to say these guys(trolls) are pretty sharp. Sort of good to get a challenge and sharpen your thoughts." NorthCarolinaLiberty

So, I'm obviously not one of the Russian trolls that have infected this site, but damn... It seems awfully damned coincidental that the "discarded" item turned up 4 months later and infected someone just ahead of the US President's meeting with Putin.

"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat

"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire

“Police are hunting for the deadly syringe or vial laced with Novichok that poisoned a couple in Salisbury as they finally evacuated homes five days after they fell catastrophically ill. Dawn Sturgess, 44, and her boyfriend Charles Rowley, 45, became critically ill within hours of visiting Salisbury on Saturday – the site of the murder attempt on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The authorities are still searching for the container carrying the nerve agent, which could kill anyone who found it, and the homeless shelter where Dawn lived in Salisbury and Charlie’s home in Amesbury have now been screened-off and residents evacuated.
A security source told the Evening Standard:‘It could have been picked up by anyone, including a child. There’s no doubt it will be contaminated still’, adding the poison could be deadly ‘for decades’ if kept dry.
Salisbury Hospital chief executive Cara Charles-Barks has revealed the victims remain in a critical condition in intensive care and are ‘acutely unwell’ but added that nobody else has been poisoned.
One friend of the couple, who were known to be drug users, believes they may have found a syringe believing it contained heroin rather than the deadly poison used by assassins Britain claims were sent by Russia.‘It was definitely an accident. I think they found a package and it looked like drugs’, she said.
Dawn and Charlie collapsed after a visit to the Queen Elizabeth Gardens on Friday, an area not searched or decontaminated after the Skripals were poisoned in March, raising serious questions about the quality of the clear-up operation four months ago.”

Okay, so this one is pretty easy to debunk, and I think I can save the media the trouble of going on about this for days on end, only to have to shift their explanation away from the vial/syringe in Queen Elizabeth Gardens to another door handle perhaps, or a car, cemetery, restaurant, bench, or even porridge.
The article points your attention to the apparent expert, who is able to assure us that the substance A-234, which prior to March 2018 was reckoned to be highly volatile, is able to survive in a syringe/vial for donkeys' years. Here’s my advice: Don’t pay any attention to what he’s saying! Why? Because it’s a complete and utter red-herring, which – either wittingly or unwittingly – turns your attention away from a rather obvious reason why this is complete nonsense. And what is that?
It is this: Queen Elizabeth Gardens is nowhere near Christie Miller Road. Even if you had accepted the Government narrative that the Skripals were poisoned by a military grade nerve agent (of a type 5-8 times more toxic than VX), which was poured (or now presumably squirted from the syringe) onto the door handle of Mr Skripal’s front door, by professional assassins not wearing HazMats – all of which requires much cognitive dissonance – what are you now being asked to believe? That the professional unHazMatted Russian assassins, after leaving Chez Skripal, decided not to leg it to Heathrow or Gatwick pronto, but to drive to Elizabeth Gardens.
As I say, it’s a beautiful park, and one which I would encourage people to visit, although you may find that quite tricky just at the moment. But here’s the thing:

How likely do you suppose it to be that the alleged professional Russian hitmen, after undertaking their dangerous and potentially deadly assignment, decided to drive from Christie Miller Road to Elizabeth Gardens, which is out of the way, and certainly not the way you’d drive if you wanted to get to an airport quickly, where they parked their car, got out and then went for a walk to drop their deadly (but non-lethal) Novichok-laced syringe in the gardens, where it lay undetected for four months.

I’d put the chances of that at zero, and not a smidgen more.But that’s apparently what we’re being asked to believe. Until of course they change the narrative tomorrow.

How likely do you suppose it to be that the alleged professional Russian hitmen, after undertaking their dangerous and potentially deadly assignment, decided to drive from Christie Miller Road to Elizabeth Gardens, which is out of the way, and certainly not the way you’d drive if you wanted to get to an airport quickly, where they parked their car, got out and then went for a walk to drop their deadly (but non-lethal) Novichok-laced syringe in the gardens, where it lay undetected for four months.

Dropping it on your exit route would be too obvious. You would want to get rid of it where nobody would be looking (and probably would have disposed of it better-- but police have still been unable to find it yet).

Ben Jordan, a friend, described Mr Rowley as a scavenger who would pick up cigarette butts from the ground and often go through the trash cans outside charity shops in search of something he could use or sell.

"Anything and everything to sell, to survive, to use," Mr Jordan said. "What the charity shop doesn't want, he will fix it or sell it or use it for himself."

His habit raises the possibility that Mr Rowley might have picked up a used receptacle or another type of contaminated item while rummaging through trash.

Experts say just a few milligrams of the odourless Novichok liquid — the weight of a snowflake — is enough to kill a person within minutes.

But finding residue before it poisons unwitting victims is the problem.

Donald Trump: 'What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening'

"Truth isn't truth"- Rudy Giuliani

"China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump's very, very large brain," - Donald Trump.

"Yeah, I have to say these guys(trolls) are pretty sharp. Sort of good to get a challenge and sharpen your thoughts." NorthCarolinaLiberty

Russia media saying it is to discredit the Russian World Cup or the Putin Trump meeting and that it was just "bad drugs" the couple took. They are spinning all kinds of conspiracies. It was due to Brexit. It was the Ukrainians. It was a "rogue chemist".

The UK police are NOT saying this was any deliberate poisoning by anybody but a side effect from the previous poisoning- that they somehow accidentally came in contact with the poison used then.

As after the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March, Russia's pro-Kremlin media have responded to the latest incident in Amesbury by spreading conspiracy theories apparently designed to deflect blame from Russia

The overall gist of primetime state TV news reports is that Amesbury poisoning could be a ploy to tarnish Russia's image in the West, particularly at a time when - they argue - it has been boosted by its hosting of the World Cup.

They also point out that it is a time of intense diplomatic activity involving US President Donald Trump in the run-up to his meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

"Coincidentally or not," a correspondent on state-run Rossiya 1 said, the poisoning in Amesbury took place "right before" a Nato summit and Donald Trump's visit to Britain.

Over on Channel One, a London-based Russian pundit said the incident had come as Theresa May's cabinet was facing "huge problems".

In addition to a "failed" Brexit and a "failed" economy, she is dealing with the uncertainty over Mr Trump's visit and the Nato summit, he said.

He added that all this comes amid "concerns" in the West about what Mr Trump may agree with Mr Putin.

Illegal drugs
Russian TV also suggests that the Amesbury couple could have poisoned themselves with illegal drugs they had procured.

According to an NTV correspondent, drug poisoning is "a more realistic and simple account of what has happened". She spoke to a local man who was voiced over as saying that "just about everyone around here takes drugs - we think they simply got a contaminated batch".

Russian chemical weapons expert Anton Utkin told Rossiya 1's "60 Minutes" programme that both the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and the incident in Amesbury "could somehow be linked with some sort of narcotics".

'Director of Darkness'
News website Gazeta.ru speaks of a plot by a "theatre director of darkness" to smear Russia at a "suspiciously convenient time" - in the middle of a World Cup that is "disproving many of the Western press's scare stories".

Another Channel One pundit compares Britain's behaviour to the kind of hostility towards Russia usually displayed by Ukrainian leaders.

"This is pure schizophrenia, with the English beginning to imitate Kiev, who see the hand of Moscow when it rains," he said.

'Inhumane experiments'
Another common line is to suggest that the British government's Porton Down chemical research complex, which lies near both Salisbury and Amesbury, is somehow linked to the latest poisoning.

Channel One produced a map highlighting both towns' location within a 11km (6.8mi) radius of Porton Down - a fact a Rossiya 1 presenter called "a frightening coincidence".

One theory floated by pro-Kremlin media outlets says the attacks in the two towns were the work of a rogue British chemical weapons specialist.

Nikolai Kovalyov, a former head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), told government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta that this could be a former Porton Down employee who "is continuing with his inhumane experiments on people".

The remark refers to the fact that Port Down in the past tested nerve gas on humans.

On social media, pro-Kremlin commentators have been spreading similar conspiracy theories to their counterparts on TV and news websites.

Many also distorted remarks by British Home Office minister Ben Wallace to the BBC that the police are working on the assumption that the couple poisoned in Amesbury "are victims of the consequences of the previous attack or something else but not that they were directly targeted".

State news agency RIA Novosti reported this as "based on London's provisional information, Russia is not complicit in the Amesbury poisoning incident. It wasn't an attack by Moscow".

"British Home Office: According to London's preliminary data, Russia is not involved in the incident with the Amesbury poisoning. Wow!" prominent pro-Kremlin social media commentator Armen Gasparyan tweeted.

Donald Trump: 'What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening'

"Truth isn't truth"- Rudy Giuliani

"China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump's very, very large brain," - Donald Trump.

"Yeah, I have to say these guys(trolls) are pretty sharp. Sort of good to get a challenge and sharpen your thoughts." NorthCarolinaLiberty

Russia media saying it is to discredit the Russian World Cup or the Putin Trump meeting and that it was just "bad drugs" the couple took. They are spinning all kinds of conspiracies. It was due to Brexit. It was the Ukrainians. It was a "rogue chemist".

The UK police are NOT saying this was any deliberate poisoning by anybody but a side effect from the previous poisoning- that they somehow accidentally came in contact with the poison used then.

13:40: Sergei and Yulia arrived at the Sainsbury’s upper level car park in The Maltings. The pair go to The Mill pub.Approximately 14.20: They eat at Zizzi restaurant on Castle Street15:35: They leave the restaurant16:15: Emergency services are called by a member of the public to the bench where Sergei and Yulia are slumped on a bench

So: car park, pub, restaurant, bench. Simples? Not so, as we shall see.
On 28th March, an article appeared in the Sun, which talked about a 12-year-old boy from Salisbury, Aiden Cooper, who was apparently in a park with his parents, when he saw the Skripals and went over to them to feed the ducks:

“A schoolboy told yesterday how he was caught up in the poison spy drama after assassination target Sergei Skripal gave him bread to feed ducks. Aiden Cooper, 12, was playing in a park with pals when they saw Skripal and daughter Yulia beside a stream. They were handed bread and are among the last people to have had contact with the retired *Russian military intellig*ence colonel, now fighting for his life.“

Of course, I would always want to have a large bucket of salt on standby when reading anything in The Sun, but in this case I see no reason why they, or the people quoted in the article, would make this up. In any case, the story was repeated in a number of other outlets (The Mirror, The Mail and Metro for instance), and it mentions that the parents only found out about the identity of the breadman when they were contacted by police.Now, the interesting thing about The Mirror, The Mail and Metro pieces is that they are all either very wrong or very vague about a quite crucial detail. The Mirror and The Mail both tell us that the incident took place “near the Avon Playground”. And Metro tells us that the incident took place at “Riverside Park”.
For those of you not familiar with Salisbury, let me shed some light. The Avon Playground mentioned by The Mirror and The Mail is next to the Avon River, and it is also about 50 yards or so from the bench where the Skripals were found (as an aside, this is not the same Avon as in Stratford-upon-Avon. Avon is a Celtic word meaning river). As for Riverside Park mentioned by Metro, this may be a figment of their imagination, as no such named park exists in Salisbury. But the important point is that from the details given in these articles, nobody would think anything other than that the duck-feeding incident took place in the same park as the bench on which the Skripals were found.Yet all three of these media outlets are wrong, and in a way that may well be very significant. Turning back to the report in The Sun, we find that it is by far the most detailed of all the reports on the duck incident. In fact, it appeared three days after the others appeared, with The Sun sending a reporter to interview the boy and his parents. Here is a snippet:

“Aiden and his pals are thought to be the youngest of 130 exposed to the nerve agent Novichok, said to have been unleashed in Salisbury by President Vladimir Putin…
Aiden’s family were alerted after cops traced him from CCTV pics.
Aiden’s civil engineer dad Luke, 33, said: ‘Obviously we had seen the incident on the news but didn’t think we were involved at all. Aiden was playing in the park with his friends when they spotted the Russian gentleman and his daughter. Kids being kids they went over and he gave them some bread and they fed the ducks. We didn’t think anything of it until two weeks later when then the police knocked on our door.’
It was terrifying. We took Aiden to hospital for a load of tests and then the police told us they had to burn everything Aiden was wearing that day.'”

So presumably, Aiden and his friends were seen on camera, as was Sergei Skripal and possibly Yulia, and this was on 4th March. We aren’t told when in the day this was, but given that the police traced the family, and Aiden then had to go to hospital, it clearly must have been after the police claim Mr Skripal came into contact with nerve agent on his door handle.
But here’s the significant fact (I am indebted to a lady who contacted me to point it out, and I must say I kicked myself for not having realised it before). Unlike the media outlets mentioned above, The Sun doesn’t mention the name of the park, but the piece is accompanied by four photographs of Aiden with his parents in the park where they saw the Skripals, and indeed one of them has the caption “Aiden with his parents by the pond where he spoke to Skripal”. Here is one of the pictures:But do you know something? This isn’t the Avon Playground. It isn’t even the non-existent Riverside Park. Do you want to know where it is? It happens to be Queen Elizabeth Gardens.
Why is this important? As you are probably aware, Queen Elizabeth Gardens is now a focal point of Skripal 2.0, as it is alleged to be the place where Dawn Sturgess, who has now sadly passed away, picked up a syringe or a container with the toxic substance in. And whilst I’m not entirely sure whether the location of the duck incident being in Queen Elizabeth Gardens, rather than the Avon Playground, has any bearing in terms of the cases themselves, it does raise three huge questions:

Firstly, according to the Metropolitan Police timeline at the top of this piece, there is no mention of Mr Skripal and Yulia going to Queen Elizabeth Gardens. Why is this, since according to the parents of Aiden Cooper, the police knew that they had been there, having seen footage of them feeding the ducks with their son and his friends?
Secondly, if the police knew that Mr Skripal and Yulia had been in Queen Elizabeth Gardens, and that this was after they were poisoned (as they claim), why was Queen Elizabeth Gardens not closed off immediately and subject to a clean-up operation, as were other places in the City where the Skripals were known to have visited?
Thirdly, assuming the latest official narrative, did the failure to close off and clean up Queen Elizabeth Gardens back in March, when it was known the Skripals had been there, make it more or less likely that someone would come into contact with the alleged nerve agent container at some point?

These are serious questions. I think you’ll agree that they deserve serious answers.POSTSCRIPT
One or two comments suggest that a map would be helpful. Again, I am indebted to the lady who pointed the Queen Elizabeth Gardens connection out to me, who has helpfully created a map with the main areas of interest (see below).
Can I just caution about one thing though. The point of my post was not to try and work out whether Queen Elizabeth Gardens is important as regards the original case. I think we could go down endless rabbit holes trying to work out where the Skripals went, when they went there, and what this might mean. Unfortunately, we simply do not know this, as there is too much information that we are not party to.What I am trying to do at the moment is exploit holes in the official story (of which there are more than a few). The police have not included QEG in their timeline, and yet they apparently know that the Skripals were there that day. Why have they not included it? Why did they not close the Gardens down? And had they done so, could this have prevented others from coming into contact with the substance?
I am not saying that I necessarily think there was a substance there. There may or may not have been. However, the point is that the authorities are saying this and yet those same authorities apparently know that the Skripals were there on 4th March, but have hushed this up. Therefore, we need to turn up the volume on it and they need to explain themselves.